What Makes A Ski Resort Good for Non-Skiers?
The best ski resorts for non-skiers offer a complete winter holiday experience in addition to great skiing. Extensive winter walking and snowshoe trails, ice skating, shopping, nice cafes, bars, and restaurants, and interesting events are the hallmarks of a truly great destination for skiers and non-skiers alike. Village charm and culture is also important, as non-skiers often spend more time in the resort village than on the mountain.
Best Non-Skier Resorts
Not everyone in a ski group wants to ski, so choosing the wrong resort for a mixed group can make non-skiers feel like an afterthought. Spending a week in a resort with nothing to do but watch other people have fun on the mountain can be a frustrating experience, however beautiful the scenery. The best mixed-group ski holidays start with choosing a resort that takes the non-skiing experience as seriously as the skiing.
The best ski resorts for non-skiers have been rated for the quality and variety of their off-slope offering, and the overall quality of the resort experience for someone who never puts on a pair of skis. These are the destinations where non-skiers have a genuinely full and enjoyable winter holiday rather than a week of killing time.
What To Look For in a Best Ski Resort for Non-Skiers
A genuine cultural and social life in the village matters enormously for non-skiers who may spend the whole day off the mountain. We look for resorts with good independent shops, restaurants, galleries, museums, concerts, events, and other activities that make no two days feel the same.
Mountain Restaurants
The best resorts for non-skiers and mixed groups are those where the two groups can intersect easily during the day. Summit viewpoints and mountain restaurants accessible by gondola or on foot, as well as by skiing, and après-ski bars near the base of the slopes all make the shared experience easier. We look specifically for resorts where non-skiers can enjoy the mountain environment, not just the village because sharing the views and a long lunch is among the most important parts of a ski holiday for mixed groups.
Winter-Walking
Winter-walking is one of the most popular activities for non-skiers and often underrated by those that have not tried it. The infrastructure that supports it is wildly inconsistent between resorts, but the best destinations for non-skiers offer extensive networks of well-maintained, graded and signposted, winter-walking trails that access genuinely beautiful terrain. Not just walking in and around the village, but high-altitude trails with mountain views, forest paths, lakeside routes, and easily accessible mountain restaurants, that offer a real sense of being in the mountains. We weight winter-walking heavily in our non-skier ratings because it determines how much of the mountain environment a non-skier can actually access.
Other Activities
A variety of other activities beyond walking is what separates genuinely non-skier friendly resorts from those that lack facilities and amenities for non-skiers. Ice skating, snowshoeing, horse-drawn sleigh rides, ice climbing, paragliding, snowmobile tours, and curling all appear in the activity programmes of the top-ranked resorts on this page. The best destinations offer enough variety that a week of non-skiing activity feels full rather than repetitive, with other activities overlapping with skiing so that mixed groups can spend time together on the mountain even when not everyone arrives on skis.
Spa & Wellness
Spa and wellness facilities are another important factor for non-skiers and the range and quality of spa and wellness across ski resorts is huge. We favour ski resorts with impressive, purpose-built wellness facilities, not just hotel pools and saunas, but comprehensive spa complexes with thermal baths, and the kind of offering that could anchor a trip in its own right. Great spa and wellness facilities help transform a ski holiday for a non-skier from a week of waiting into something genuinely restorative. Traditionally, St Moritz, Davos, Leukerbad, Pizol (Bad Ragaz), and Bad Gastein set the standard for spa and wellness in the Alps, and more top Alpine resorts with no particular history of wellness now offer excellent public spa and wellness facilities. For example, at Courchevel’s ‘Aquamotion’, which claims to be Europe’s largest mountain water park and wellness centre, and St Anton’s impressive ‘Arlberg WellCom’ centre.
Best Non-Skier Resorts: Europe v North America
European ski resorts lead the world for non-skiing infrastructure, particularly in Switzerland. The Swiss have a long tradition of winter tourism that pre-dates the ski industry. The original appeal of resorts like Davos, Grindelwald and St Moritz, was the mountain air, the winter walks, and the therapeutic value of the alpine environment long before skiing became the dominant activity. That heritage has produced a depth of non-skiing infrastructure and activities, including walking paths, spas, cultural events, and winter sports beyond skiing, that is unmatched elsewhere. Austrian spa resorts like Bad Gastein and Bad Kleinkirchheim add a thermal bathing culture that gives non-skiers a genuinely compelling reason to be there.
North American ski towns offer a different but increasingly compelling non-skiing experience. The best ski resort towns in Colorado, such as Aspen and Telluride in particular, and Park City in Utah, have developed rich cultural and culinary scenes that stand entirely apart from the skiing. Aspen’s restaurant scene, arts programme, and winter events calendar would justify a visit with no skiing involved at all. The challenge with North American ski resorts for non-skiers is consistency. The gap between the best and worst is wider than in Europe, and some otherwise excellent ski resorts have invested very little in the off-slope experience.
